D&D 4E Low magic/low healing in 4E?

[S'mon]

Midnight can be a good fit with 4e, but only if you go the Big Damn Ironborn Heroes route, not the Scavenging for Rotten Turnips route. To that end:

1. Inherent Bonuses
2. Almost no money, no economy, so no item crafting. Items are what you take from the bad guys - and most of those are Evil and unuseable anyway.
3. No Divine power source, except for the bad guys - Clerics & Paladins of Izrador are fine, obviously.

If you want to do permanent damage to PCs, use the Disease Track rules rather than messing with healing surges. You may want to make an Extended Rest a rare and precious thing, Rivendell style - a week in comfortable surrounds, perhaps, with an overnight rest giving say 1 HS back.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I'm going to take a different approach. What is your goal in limiting healing? What are you really trying to achieve from a narrative standpoint? And specifically why do you feel that 4e RAW cannot achieve this in the context of the Midnight campaign setting?

I think that trying to convey the setting's feeling of gloom, desperation, and oppression by dark forces can mostly be done via narrative without the need for a lot of monkeying with the system.

One of the grimmest, grittiest, and most brutally oppressive (from a narrative standpoint) games I ever played in was a 3e game where everyone in the party was an epic 40th level PC positively glowing with gobs of magic.

Despite our seemingly superheroic PCs, we felt like horrible things could happen at any moment and constantly played on the edge of our seats. The DM we played with was able to achieve this grim Warhammer feel completely through encounter design, narration, and role-play. The only spells he really nerfed was long range teleportation, scry, and divination magic. Everything else was pretty much 3e RAW.

One of the tenets of Midnight was that the good guys had lost and that there was no divine healing available to them, as there were no "good" deities - Only one big evil one. Additionally, while arcane magic is available, anybody using it that is not allied with the bad guys is hunted down & killed.

However, back in 3E days, divine healing was a large majority of the healing, so limiting healing was easier. You cut out divine healing and the PCs have a very limited amount of healing.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Midnight can be a good fit with 4e, but only if you go the Big Damn Ironborn Heroes route, not the Scavenging for Rotten Turnips route. To that end:

1. Inherent Bonuses
2. Almost no money, no economy, so no item crafting. Items are what you take from the bad guys - and most of those are Evil and unuseable anyway.
3. No Divine power source, except for the bad guys - Clerics & Paladins of Izrador are fine, obviously.

If you want to do permanent damage to PCs, use the Disease Track rules rather than messing with healing surges. You may want to make an Extended Rest a rare and precious thing, Rivendell style - a week in comfortable surrounds, perhaps, with an overnight rest giving say 1 HS back.

What's a Big Damn Ironborn Hero?

 

[Dragonblade]

One of the tenets of Midnight was that the good guys had lost and that there was no divine healing available to them, as there were no "good" deities - Only one big evil one. Additionally, while arcane magic is available, anybody using it that is not allied with the bad guys is hunted down & killed.

However, back in 3E days, divine healing was a large majority of the healing, so limiting healing was easier. You cut out divine healing and the PCs have a very limited amount of healing.

I owned the core book a long time ago before I sold it. So I'm vaguely familiar with the setting. Essentially, a LotR where Sauron wins.

For a 4e conversion, I would ban the divine power source, kind of like they did with Dark Sun. Leaving players to take Martial, Arcane, or Primal. Possibly Psionic, but that doesn't necessarily fit the LotR-esque feel they are going for, so I'd probably ban Psionic as well.

Flavor-wise that would be sufficient, I think. Everything else can be achieved through narrative and role-play. I don't think you would need to mess around with healing at all. Perhaps, as has been suggested, you could modify the disease rules to create a long term injury track, or a even borrow the one from SW Saga Edition.

But I agree with the previous poster that a 4e Midnight would work best where the heroes are actually badass heroes. They are just all alone against an overwhelming and pervasive darkness. 4e wouldn't work as well in a game where the DM wants their players struggling to figure out where their next meal is going to come from. Personally, I don't think 3e does that kind of campaign very well either. For that kind of survivalist game of Midnight, I'd recommend tracking down a copy of Green Ronin's 2nd Edition Warhammer Fantasy Role-play and use that instead.

A lot of poorly designed d20 games tried the whole "let's limit healing for flavor!" schtick back in the day. IK d20 is the example I'm most familiar with. And the results were not good.

 

[S'mon]

What's a Big Damn Ironborn Hero?

'Big Damn Heroes' is a TV trope, probably Joss Whedon origin I suspect. Ironborn is one of the inherent heroic aspects that PCs in d20 Midnight get; my much-loved Midnight PC Zana Than (RIP) was Ironborn.

 

[S'mon]

A lot of poorly designed d20 games tried the whole "let's limit healing for flavor!" schtick back in the day. IK d20 is the example I'm most familiar with. And the results were not good.

AIR in d20 Midnight we were usually running away, except for set piece ambushes and assaults. We rarely fought at less than full hp.

For 4e, limiting healing surge recovery makes much more sense than limiting hp recovery. The best way to do that is neonchameleon's approach of increasing the time required to get an Extended Rest. There is no reason to limit access to healing surges in combat, and that goes against the core Midnight assumption that the PCs are actually heroes, not mere survivors/scavengers. For a scavenger game I'd agree that WFRP would be a better choice.

 

[S'mon]

For a 4e conversion, I would ban the divine power source, kind of like they did with Dark Sun. Leaving players to take Martial, Arcane, or Primal. Possibly Psionic, but that doesn't necessarily fit the LotR-esque feel they are going for, so I'd probably ban Psionic as well.

The number of power sources banned is a good metric of how dark your 4e version of Midnight will be.
Martial - you want to keep this, unless you're doing an "all PCs are Primal Heroes" type thing (see below).
Arcane - self-limiting in d20 Midnight as its use can be detected by agents of the Shadow. Although the d20 'Channeler' rules were horribly broken. I'd probably keep it, the 4e Arcana rules work well for detectable magic use, but I'd remind players that it's a disadvantaged source; better for occasional Rituals and maybe multiclassing than for PC main classes.
Primal - is Nature itself opposing the Shadow? If so, that rather lessens the Grimdark; basically Nature is standing in as a quasi-divine power equivalent to Izrador. Me, I like the idea that the Earth itself rises up against the Shadow, but for a more Grimdarky game, ban this source.
Psionic - I can see Sarcosans mastering the psionic arts, but it's not very Tolkieny, I wouldn't use it.

So for a typical Midnight campaign you have Martial, Arcane (disadvantaged) and possibly Primal, depending on how Grimdark you want it. A Grimdarker campaign would have just Martial, with Arcane too dangerous to use.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Thanks S'mon - good input. I appreciate somebody with a background in Midnight answering the question.

(Did they make Midnight for 4E?)

 

[S'mon]

Thanks S'mon - good input. I appreciate somebody with a background in Midnight answering the question.

(Did they make Midnight for 4E?)

Not AFAIK, AIR the version I played was written for 3.0 D&D. I think it actually fits 4e better than 3e, though.

 

[D'karr]

One way to make the game more "gritty" is to leave healing with surges as normal, allow full recovery of hit points after an extended rest, but limit surge recovery to a "cared for rest", or specific milestones (plot points).

So in combat the players can still recover hit points by spending healing surges but those surges don't come back easily, or require specific conditions (plot points) to recover.

Some time ago I developed a system for long term injuries and wounds. It works well for its intended purpose but I use it only for specific effect, not as a default.

There are 3 articles covering the entire idea of healing within D&D, but the third article is where you will find long term injury and wounds.

Article 1. Serious Injury in D&D
Article 2. Semantics
Article 3. Long Term Injury and Wounds